


(Twas All He Wished) A Friend

by yet_intrepid



Series: miserable events [2]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Series of Unfortunate Events, Angst, Class Differences (which will be a bigger thing later in this series!), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enjolras-centric, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, Orphans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:06:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23126737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: Enjolras bites his lip as he slips, carefully, towards a rock a little ways off. He perches there andacheswith how much he misses Combeferre. It’s wrong, perhaps, that he doesn’t miss his parents most, but he can’t help it.*If you are looking for a happy story, I entreat you to look elsewhere. If, however, you are looking for a series of disjointed oneshots in which a set of young aspiring revolutionaries find themselves distressed, lonely, and thwarted at every turn? You have found what you are looking for, though I must say I cannot imagine why you seek it.*A Series of Unfortunate Events AU.
Relationships: Enjolras & Feuilly (Les Misérables)
Series: miserable events [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653706
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	(Twas All He Wished) A Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" yet again.
> 
> [gestures at all of this] I'm back on my incredibly specific bullshit, I guess! There's a scene or two I want to write that'll fit chronologically between this one and the previous installment (ft. Combeferre, mostly), but we're just kinda plowing forward for now.

By the time they finally stop to rest the horses, the time Enjolras reads off Count Olaf’s pocketwatch is three-thirty in the morning. 

Enjolras is too old to complain about things like sitting too long in a bumpy carriage. He knows that. But Olaf and the Countess are so loud, back-and-forth between arguing and complimenting each other in ways he can’t make sense of, and there are far too many people wedged into the seats. He wishes he’d been in the wagon behind, with the trunks and stray pieces of furniture, instead. At least in the quiet there he would’ve been able to think.

They all spill out of the carriage, Olaf and the Countess and their daughter, who’s got to be the same age as Enjolras but is dressed like an adult with her hair up, and most of the troupe still in their not-quite-right mourning clothes. The place they’ve stopped isn’t even an inn, Enjolras thinks, not that he knows much about inns but all that seems to be happening is water and feed for the horses. One of the men from the troupe, the one with a hook instead of his right hand, is directing it, and a boy who was riding in the wagon is carrying things. Olaf doesn’t help—just yells at them, and stops the boy more than once to slap him.

Enjolras bites his lip as he slips, carefully, towards a rock a little ways off. He perches there and _aches_ with how much he misses Combeferre. It’s wrong, perhaps, that he doesn’t miss his parents most, but he can’t help it. He is used to Combeferre’s company every day, as many hours as they can snatch, used to Combeferre’s notes in the margins of borrowed books and to leaving him letters folded small under their designated stones if Monsieur Combeferre is angry and won’t let them see one another.

And so the echo in his head, the echo of _I’ll never see him again; it’ll never be the same_ , doesn’t summon his parents’ faces. It summons Combeferre’s, and Enjolras can’t bear it.

He has to get out, he thinks, desperately. He has to—go. Back to Lyons, somehow. It’s dark, and no one’s watching, and no one’s paid attention to him all night anyway.

He could just walk into the trees, right now.

Enjolras is about to stand up, about to take his chances—but he’s wrong. Someone _is_ watching him. The boy from before, about his age, is hovering just a few feet away with an odd look on his face.

He’ll have to wait.

Suddenly, Enjolras finds tears in his eyes. He’s so exhausted. It’s been two whole days since he’s slept more than a few hours, and more than that since he slept without nightmares. The whole world seems so miserable.

“If you’re thinking about running away,” the boy says, without preamble, “I’d recommend you think it through a little longer first.”

Enjolras peers over at him, eyes squinted up in an effort to look like he’s not starting to cry. “You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he says, too tired for the words to be angry. Overhead, the moon is a thin sliver, and the stars are brighter than they ever seemed from the doorstep of his home in the heart of Lyons.

That doorstep is charred now. Enjolras reaches into his jacket pocket, clutches the spyglass he retrieved from the ashes, and blinks a little harder to get rid of his tears.

“I know what _I’d_ be thinking,” the boy says. He sits in the dirt nearby, knees pulled up, and Enjolras takes a good look at him for the first time. He’s—ragged. Not just his clothes, but the exhaustion in his eyes. Under his cap, his face is dirty and drawn.

“What’s your name?” Enjolras asks.

The boy peers at him in turn, surprised. “Feuilly. Emile Feuilly.”

“I’m Alexandre Enjolras.”

“I know.” Feuilly’s laugh is tired. “They’ve been talking about you for months, you know. Planning.”

“Because of my father’s money.” That’s the only reason anyone wanted his guardianship. Enjolras grips the spyglass tighter. “But my parents died in an accident.”

Feuilly inhales like he’s about to say something. And then he looks over towards the carriage, where Olaf is shouting at his wife, and doesn’t.

What the hell, Enjolras thinks. “They died in a _fire_ ,” he says. “They weren’t sick. It doesn’t make sense for someone to just be waiting around for them to die!”

“Shh,” Feuilly hisses, grabbing Enjolras’ wrist. He looks—he looks afraid. Enjolras gets the sense that he, too, ought to be frightened, but he isn’t. He’s only angry: on his own behalf, yes, but also on Feuilly’s. They’ve known each other only a few minutes, but he can _tell_ that Feuilly is kind and quick-witted and brave, and even if he were none of those things he wouldn’t deserve to be so tired and hungry-looking.

“Enjolras,” Feuilly goes on, “I know you aren’t used to…all this. But you have to understand that Olaf is a dangerous man. And he knows people that are even more dangerous than he is.”

Oh. Enjolras opens his mouth, hesitates.

“You mean,” he says, quieter, and Feuilly nods.

“I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t an _accident._ The knowledge settles inside him, awful and firm. It’s not that he had been close to his parents; they barely knew how to have a conversation with him, really. His tutor before he was sent to school last year had been more the way he read parents were supposed to be—kind and curious, around all the time. Someone who he _felt_ loved by, instead of just figuring love was there because it ought to be.

But it still felt strange and terrible for his parents to die, and it feels a new kind of strange and terrible for them to have been murdered.

“Was this how he got you, too?” Enjolras asks, the question striking him suddenly. “Has he done this before?”

Feuilly’s concerned face tightens a little and he lets go of Enjolras’ wrist, self-conscious. “No. Well, yes and no. He’s tried it before, but not with me. I don’t have any kind of an inheritance.”

Oh, Enjolras thinks again. He, too, becomes self-conscious. He wonders if that’s what makes Feuilly so—disposable, to Olaf and his wife and even the others. It’s not that Enjolras has been treated with kindness exactly. But he’s been fed as well as the rest and he’s in his own sturdy overcoat, and he hasn’t been _hit_ even if he’s wondered once or twice whether it was about to happen. His father’s wealth landed him here in the first place, but it’s also keeping him safer. Feuilly, though?

That firm, awful, angry feeling inside him is his whole body now. He’s felt like this before, when Combeferre’s father was at his worst, or when his grandmother told him he couldn’t give his allowance to the man begging on the corner who smiled at him.

Enjolras slides off the rock onto the ground so he and Feuilly can sit shoulder-to-shoulder, [against the world].

“I was at a parish orphanage before this,” Feuilly says. He smiles a little welcome as Enjolras settles beside him. “Olaf convinced them he was offering some kind of apprenticeship, bricklaying I think, so the nuns handed me off. I’ve tried to run off—I was on the streets a while before the orphanage, so I figured I’d be fine. But Olaf’s always dragged me back, and with you he’d be even more determined.”

“Because of the money,” Enjolras says again. His voice is tired.

Feuilly nods, his head tipped up to the sky. “That’s why I stopped you. If you run early, without a plan, he’ll be watching you all the time afterwards.”

“Thank you,” says Enjolras.

Feuilly looks at him, surprised.

“I mean it,” Enjolras insists. “This is—you’ve been kind to me. Other than my friend Combeferre, you’re the only one who has been, since my parents died. And I don’t know if I’ll ever see Combeferre again. So it means far more than I can say.”

“Well, if there’s more I can do, I will,” Feuilly says. “Though as you can tell, I’m not in a position to swing much.”

“I’m already in your debt.”

Feuilly shakes his head. “There’s no debt between friends,” he says. “We’re both better off if we work together, that’s all.”

“I wish everyone understood that the world worked like that,” Enjolras says, and as he returns Feuilly’s soft smile, he realizes he was wrong, at first. Feuilly knows _exactly_ what he’s thinking, and he isn’t too tired to be angry after all.


End file.
